Response to Ethan's story

            “Holes full of dirt” by Ethan Hightower is about a teenage boy looking for self-confidence and searching to please the girl he has a crush on. He finds that he is incompetent to fix the holes in the road on his own, but he finds encouragement from his father, which helps him to keep his head up at the conclusion of the story.

            I really like the characters in this story and the conflicts that are going on between them. First, there is the conflict between the protagonist Jeremy and Ashlyn, who is a year older, attractive, enchanting, and able to drive. The conflict is pretty simple: since Ashlyn is older, Jeremy feels like she has power over him, like he has to do something extraordinary to prove his worthiness to her; that really, he doesn’t have a chance with her. Second, there is conflict between Jeremy and his friend Denver. Jeremy snaps at Denver when he approaches the protagonist filling the potholes in the road and asks if he wants to hang out later. When Jeremy awkwardly turns down Denver’s friendly requests, Denver thinks Jeremy is prudish for wanting to work hard and silly for trying to impress the girl. Finally there is conflict between Jeremy and his father. Jeremy is afraid his father will be judgmental to him when he asks to use the tractor to get the truck out of the ditch; however, realizing his son’s self-defeated air, he pats Jeremy on the back and tells him he’s done a fine job.

            The protagonist needs more profound and detailed thoughts, specifically thoughts pertaining to his perception of self, his desires, fears, etc. As a reader, I have no doubt what these thoughts and emotions are, as they are stated pretty clearly. However, I think these thoughts could be visualized better if they were stated more subtly or indirectly. As an example, the paragraph with the sentence, “Like in most other circumstances, the more I thought, the more uncomfortable I felt,” could be improved by saying something like:

                        “Unable to change the subject, I fell into silence. I felt trapped. My tongue

was restricted by my racing thoughts, and I felt more and more like a helpless child beside her, her hand poised coolly on the steering wheel.”

This way, you are saying the same things, but we can visualize this better and empathize better with what Jeremy is feeling.